Remember Sunday afternoons?

REMEMBER Sunday afternoons when there wasn't much to do, everything was closed? Families had a big dinner. Sometimes we'd stay home, or go for a Sunday drive or maybe go visiting.

Remember Sunday dinner? There was no other meal during the week that was anything like it. It was usually a roast, mashed potatoes, gravy, and a green and yellow vegetable. Dessert was pie, which my mother had made Saturday morning. She always baked on Saturday mornings. Remember Saturday mornings? No, never mind, that's another story altogether.

When we stayed home, my parents read the Sunday paper. Remember when people took all afternoon to read the Sunday paper? We played games, Monopoly, Parcheesi (not Frogger or Pac-Man), or we did puzzles. Remember puzzles?

Remember Sunday drives? I don't recall anything particularly outstanding about our Sunday drives. I guess that was what was so nice about them. They were just quiet, peaceful drives through the countryside. There wasn't much traffic. My friend was telling me about her family's Sunday drives. Her father would drive along and after an hour or two, her mother would announce it was time to be heading home. This was her father's cue to helplessly state that he was lost. All the little heads would come popping up from the back seat with a chorus of ''take a right, turn left,'' and he would allow them to pilot him home.

Remember visiting? When we went visiting on Sunday, relatives' houses mostly, my father would put on his suit, double-breasted, navy blue pin stripe, the only one I ever knew him to own. My mother would put on a good dress, not one of her everyday housedresses. Remember when mothers stayed home and wore housedresses?

We'd all pile into the Model A. Remember Model A's? Even though it was the mid-'50s, we had a Model A. My father, being a true Yankee, couldn't see any reason for replacing something if it still worked. After all, the Model A got us where we wanted to go and home again, didn't it? The seat covers always scratched my legs. That was before little girls wore slacks when they went visiting. Remember scratchy seat covers and little girls in dresses and ankle socks?

Anyway, we'd all pile into the Model A and head for Aunt Evelyn's, or Aunt Helen's or Aunt Mabel's. Remember when aunts had names like that? The ride to Aunt Mabel's was the best. There weren't any expressways then. Remember when there weren't any expressways? We took back roads. One time my mother said there must be 40 right-hand turns between our house and Aunt Mabel's. Well, that did it. From then on we would count the right-hand turns, the left-hand turns, and anything else we could think of. Remember counting things on a car trip instead of listening to the radio?

Oh yes, do you remember Sunday dinner? Do you remember going visiting? Do you remember Sunday afternoons when there wasn't much to do because everything was closed?